Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to backup storage systems and, more specifically, to the use of lifecycle policy information for backup images.
Description of the Related Art
In many organizations, computing systems and networks often contain valued information that the organization may wish to preserve and protect. For example, a business organization may desire to store customer records and/or orders in a safe manner that is resilient to system failures.
A common technique for securing valuable data is to perform a backup of the data. Organizations have traditionally deployed various automated data backup products, such as Symantec Corporation's NetBackup™ software. Such products may protect valuable data, such as a group of files, by creating a backup image of the data and storing a copy of that image on one or more redundant storage resources, such as one or more backup servers. In some cases, a backup image may be created and moved to a backup location manually by a system administrator. In some cases, the backup image may include the backup data (which may be compressed) and some header information that allows a receiving server to reconstitute the backed up data (e.g., file names, directory structure, compression techniques applied, etc.) Thus, if the original data is lost, the backup image may be retrieved and restored. Such loss and restoration of data may sometimes be referred to as disaster recovery.
Backup servers sometimes manage backup images according to various storage policies. These policies may be stored in a domain-local backup catalog (i.e., database) and may be associated with each backup image. When a backup image is transferred to a domain that does not have access to the original backup catalog (e.g., a disaster recovery domain), implementation of these storage policies is problematic absent intervention by a system administrator of the new domain.